Tag Archives: iPhone

I wanted to post this link to show an interesting unintended consequence of a new technology. While fingerprint technology is not new, it is a new feature for a phone. The author of this article is an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She claims that there is no legal protection for the content on a phone that is locked only by fingerprint ID. The legal precedent is that knowledge is what is protected in the 5th amendment, not a physical object such as a note, email, or text. When evidence of a crime is locked on a device, the knowledge of a password is protected, not the fingerprint.

I think that this could potentially be an ethical issue if Apple knows about the potential legal issues and does not post a warning to customers and provide the option to pair the fingerprint ID with a password.